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Vatican Told to Pay Taxes as Italy Tackles Budget Crisis

If you missed this one, what’s this whole “accountability” thing about when it comes to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church? Michael Day reports in the Independent:

After several years of scandal in which the Catholic Church has faced allegations of financial impropriety, paedophile priests and rumours of plots to kill the Pope, the Vatican is now facing a new €600m-a-year tax bill as Rome seeks to head off European Commission censure over controversial property tax breaks enjoyed by the Church.

As the EC heads closer to officially condemning the fiscal perks enjoyed by the Catholic Church and introduced by the Berlusconi administration, Prime Minister Mario Monti has written to the Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, saying that the Vatican will resume property tax, or Ici, payments.

Mr Almunia said in 2010 that the exemption amounted to state aid that might breach EU competition law. A parliamentary proposal by the Italian Radicals party last August to repeal the exemption, with a successful petition on Facebook, upped the pressure. A spokesman for Mr Almunia appeared to give the thumbs-up yesterday: “It is a proposal that constitutes a significant progress on the issue and I hope will be implemented,” he said.

“You could eliminate the federal budget deficit, if all you did was tax the Catholic Church on its real estate holdings!” ~George Carlin

Lakota

they SHOULD pay. They’ve taxed the human race for centuries.

Mamagriff50

Churches are BIG BUSINESS! They should be taxed. I am not a business, I am taxed. Maybe I’ll start my own church, get a bunch of friends to join me in spreading OUR word, and voilla no taxes for us to pay. Maybe everyone should declare they’re a church. Wouldn’t that be funny…….

Michael Edwards writes on InfoWars: The Obama Administration, by Executive Order, has moved another step closer to preemptive war with Iran by declaring a National Emergency to deal with this supposed threat....